Foucault pioneered the critique of human capital theory as self-disintegration
Evidence
Foucault was the first to insist that Becker’s “human capital” was a first move in the neoliberal disintegration of the self. This race to the empty bottom is the terminal meaning of “biocapital.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 272
Categorization
- DEFINE: Frames ‘biocapital’ as the endpoint of human-capital theory extending selfhood to the genetic level.
- XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism replaces labor with human capital and dissolves the stable self — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 162; Neoliberalism redefined human being itself as human capital. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 134; Neo-liberalism collapses labor into capital and frames the individual as an enterprise — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1218 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism replaces labor with human capital and dissolves the stable self
#expands(0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 162 - Neo-liberalism collapses labor into capital and frames the individual as an enterprise
#corroborates(0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1218 - Neoliberal self-entrepreneurship destabilizes the fixed boundaries of personhood
#expands(0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 418 - Neoliberalism redefined human being itself as human capital.
#qualifies(0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 134